[ben1040]

One thing that may address your first two points is that Google demoed at I/O a web presence for the Android Market that would work in conjunction with the push service on the phone. Buy an app on the web and it's pushed to the phone.

I imagine that if done right this would allow them to match Apple in terms of providing more real estate for promotional content from app developers, and reduce the barrier to buying since you can preview an app, hit "buy," and immediately have it on the phone.

I also think the lack of a good web presence for Android Market is holding back device adoption. I know of several people who are dissatisfied with their iPhones but are hesitant to jump to Android without being able to see if there are third-party apps out there that are analogous to what they've already got on their iPhones.

I agree that one of the major problems with the Android Market at present is certainly this culture of "I won't pay for an app -- and if I have to pay, I'll copy it to my SD card and delete it within the 24 hour return window." A developer has little incentive to make a really, really good paid app if a good proportion of their users would pirate it. There's a tipping point where you can instead make more money by making a mediocre ad-supported app.

[jra101]

> I'll copy it to my SD card and delete it within the 24 hour return window.

That should be fixed with the new Android licensing server that Google recently announced.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/07/licensing-ser...

Edit: Well, fixed when developers update their apps (which they have a big incentive to do).

[ben1040]

I think this is a good thing so long as developers are also generous enough with the grace periods that legitimate users aren't affected.

If you travel to a foreign country for a week and don't have international data roaming turned on, will you need to find a coffee shop and connect to wifi sometime in the middle of your trip to re-authorize your apps?

The nice thing is that it does leave these decisions in the developer's hands. If it's a network-centric app that accesses a web service that costs the developer money to operate (and thus piracy results in monetary loss), there's no reason not to have the license be strictly checked every time the app is opened. If it's just a game, maybe not so much, because someone probably will want to play it on an airplane.

[orangecat]

I agree that one of the major problems with the Android Market at present is certainly this culture of "I won't pay for an app -- and if I have to pay, I'll copy it to my SD card and delete it within the 24 hour return window."

I haven't seen any evidence that piracy on Android is worse than on iOS. My paid app has a 5-10% return rate; even if that's all piracy, it's not worth worrying about.

[gregholland]

The problem with piracy on android is how EASY it is to pull it off. On the iPhone, you have to jailbreak your phone, a step which many consumers are weary of doing in fear of bricking their phone, after this, they also have to find a cracked .ipa to download/install. On android, you simply need to buy an app, copy to SD, return it and viola! free app. Based on stats of my paid android app, there are about 3x as many pirated users as users who actually paid for it =(

[novum]

The new iOS 4 jailbreak doesn't require any of that. You don't even need a computer; everything happens in userland on the device.

Curious to see if this affects jailbreaking numbers.